Alternity Convoy Help

Hey, I'm new to these boards, and need some help with my Alternity Convoy. I don't mistreat my TFs but this one apparently broke on me

Now the torso/stomach piece on prime is screwed up, it won't go into place in car mode, and in robot mode it refuses to connect with the lower body, there is always a gap in robot mode. The stomach piece is also always loose, which might be due to a small tab that snapped off near the top of the stomach (I think that, that piece is only to hold the stomach at a 90 degrees angle in robot mode, and does not affect the transformation).

So my understanding of the mechanism/automorph feature on the stomach is there is a plastic piece (the piece outlined in green) that is sandwiched between the two metal halves that form the upper body and front of the car. So when you bend the front of the car forwards to form robot mode the plastic column gets pulled back allowing the stomach piece to flip out pushing on the piece I snapped out. And to form car mode when the front of the car is bent up the plastic column gets pushed forwards pushing down on the stomach piece flipping it into the car.

But my problem is that the plastic column cannot move so that in car mode the stomach doesn't flip down, so that the rectangular bit behind the stomach (outlined red) does not fit into the designated area on the column.

Sorry for such a long post but any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

its on a automorph gear i ruined mine by forcing the teeth of the gear to realighn correctly. the damn driver side door mirror popped off too, while i love the mold it has given me nothing but problems and has turned me off from the line completely.

Having looked at your pictures closely I've noticed that the plastic column has stress marks on the thin horizontal, and the horizontal closer to the front of the car is damaged (it looks closer to the thinner horizontal piece than it is on my silver Convoy).

It seems you at least need a replacement part for that column, and maybe that torso piece also. That also means taking the front apart, which is one screw and an awful lot of pins from what I can see.

Thanks all for the suggestions so I guess there is no way to actually fix it is there... well thats a real bummer, since I really loved this mold. And harrismonkey you are one lucky bastard to get a replacement, I doubt Automaton would send me a replacement since I got min about a month ago.

Probably helps that I'm a semi regular customer and had several pre orders in at the time (although it was nearly a month later- I mostly display my toys and don't transform them much- so I didn't find out right away).

My Kiss player Rodimus was defective and they exchanged that as well (that one was visibly assembled wrong right out of the box and I did have to return the defective item that time)

I've transformed mine many times; you just have to be careful and gentle.
Basically, the 2nd poster is right; it's on an automorph gear, so what works for me is to gently transform the torso back and forth once or twice. For some reason, the stomach piece never goes back in when I move the torso the first time, but it collapses back in perfectly the second or third time. When you're moving the torso, the stomach should flip back in when the torso is at about a 45 degree angle to the rest of the car.
Hope this helps!